


Elcuobracse

by Perspicacia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Cameo by Cody & a few Jedi, First Kiss, Fix-It, Force Shennigans, Getting Together, Happy Ending, M/M, Sith Temple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2018-12-31 23:23:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12143361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perspicacia/pseuds/Perspicacia
Summary: “Don’t let my General die,” Cody had asked, and even those words had seemed difficult, with all the tubes and uncivilized-looking machinery the medics were using to keep him alive after a particularly gruesome crash.“Just a little mission and when we come back, you’ll be as fine as a shinie and ready to follow him again,” Rex had promised, before the medics had ejected him from the room to work on poor Cody again. If his friend hadn’t been so terribly hurt, he would have suspected this mission to be the latest of Cody’s ‘helpful’ efforts to give Rex more time with General Kenobi since the Captain had confessed about his crush to his brother.But no, it was nothing more than Cody being anxious about his General when he couldn’t guard the man’s back himself. Rex hoped it was. He really hoped so, because if Cody’s idea of a romantic getaway was a mission into a supposedly lost Sith Temple trying to find a mythical, gigantic Kyber Crystal…





	Elcuobracse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dogmatix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogmatix/gifts).



> Many thanks to the very nice and patient aeremaee for the beta and a lot of explanations about the mysteries of the english language!

The clones had been made to work with Jedi and in a way, it was a perfect success. They were adaptable and difficult to throw off, stubborn as hell and terribly smart. Just what you wanted to keep up with mystical warriors in touch with the universe itself.

The perfect trap for said mystical warriors, in fact, but that is a sad story, a story for another time.

This story is about the resilience of the clones, their courage, their strength. No natural born could have kept up with a Jedi the way they did.

No natural born could have followed Obi-Wan Kenobi inside that Sith Temple the way Captain Rex did. This hypothetical natural born would have been killed in the first hallway, or perhaps the second, crushed under a ton of rocks or perhaps shot by some poisoned arrows or by some other niceties of the same sort. Of course, General Kenobi would have protected him, her or other, to the best of his capabilities, but in a Sith Temple, smart people don’t believe too much in a Light-user’s capabilities.

All that is not important. Captain Rex was not a natural born. He was too fast, too dangerous, everything Jango had been and more, in fact. He didn’t fall for any tricks, he didn’t step into any of the booby traps, he stayed just one step behind Obi-Wan and when the mutated rancors, descendants from an experimentation of an ambitious Sith Lady, tried to discover what taste a clone had they were fed a fragmentation grenade and Rex stepped forward without even a shiver.

The clones had been made smart and lethal to be the weapon that would end the Jedi and because Rex was smart, lethal, and so much more than what the cloners had made him, he went with Obi-Wan Kenobi where no natural borns would have endured, and by that he ensured that the ginger General survived and together they brought back what would be the end of the Sith. Where General Kenobi would have failed because of his Force sensitivity, Rex succeeded, and saved the world. The galaxy didn’t fall into darkness because of the strength of a clone, something Senator Organa would later milk without shame to ensure civil rights for the clones.

That didn’t mean Rex liked the situation when it happened, nor that he understood the importance of what was happening. The site of the Sith Temple was creepy, the intel was almost nonexistent and he was pretty sure the General had spoken to hallucinations twice in their first day in said Temple.

“Don’t let my General die,” Cody had asked, and even those words had seemed difficult, with all the tubes and uncivilized-looking machinery the medics were using to keep him alive after a particularly gruesome crash.

“I will. Just a little mission and when we come back, you’ll be as fine as a shinie and ready to follow him again,” Rex had promised, before the medics had ejected him from the room to work on poor Cody again. If his friend hadn’t been so terribly hurt, he would have suspected this mission to be the latest of Cody’s ‘helpful’ efforts to give Rex more time with General Kenobi since the Captain had confessed about his crush to his brother.

But no, it was nothing more than Cody being anxious about his General when he couldn’t guard the man’s back himself. Rex hoped it was. He really hoped so, because if Cody’s idea of a romantic getaway was a mission into a supposedly lost Sith Temple trying to find a mythical, gigantic Kyber Crystal… Well, if it was, Rex had so many questions about what exactly the Kaminoans put into Cody’s decanting tube!

“It’s called the Elcuobracse,” Obi-Wan had explained, sitting with Rex in the box that pretended to be the living quarter of the shuttle they had taken from the _Negotiator_. “It was first discovered on Illum by Master Ood Bnar, who had specialized in the history of the Sith. It should be approximately the size of two fists.”

“Isn’t that a little big to put into a lightsaber?”

“It never was used that way. The Jedi of old only used it as a tool to track Dark users of the Force, not to build weapons. Master Ood Bnar went in search of the Temple containing the crystal centuries ago. The last thing the Jedi Order knew, was that he had found it. We think it’s still there and since Master Jocasta’s recent discovery of his travel logs in the archives, we hope… ”

“You hope he was killed there and the crystal will still be in the Temple. The… Elcuobrax, eh, thing.”

“The Elcuobracse.”

“Yes. And the Council think that you could find the Sith Lord with it and put an end to this war…. But, couldn’t that be done with several smaller crystals? The type you use for your lightsabers?”

“It’s a very special crystal. Not only because of its size. It’s the only referenced naturally red Kyber crystal.”

What had followed was a twenty minutes long explanation about kyber crystals, their mythology, their colours, and more; and Rex was pretty sure the General wasn’t supposed to reveal so much to a non-Jedi, but he liked hearing Obi-Wan talk with passion. And he was pretty sure Obi-Wan appreciated his presence, even if he had never asked, never dared…

Together they had followed the clues to that little moon, one of the most unpleasant places in the galaxy, if you asked Rex. Worldwide acid rains, constant nights, enormous fauna trying to eat them and poisonous flora.

“Cody better appreciate this…” the Captain had grumbled when they finally found the Temple. It was octagonal, gigantic as everything on this damn moon, and very much not-friendly looking if you believed the murals all depicting bloody and original ways to murder people. Sometimes, from the corner of his eyes, he was pretty sure he saw some of them move.

It was also a kriffin’ maze and bigger on the inside. One hour after entering, Obi-Wan began to show signs that the location was affecting him. When Rex made the decision to go back to the entry, he realised he couldn’t find it anymore. Something had moved. And Obi-Wan was already too far away from reality to use the Force to find it.

That was the beginning of a long mission.

“We’ll find it. We’ll find the crystal and win the war,” Rex had reassured him that evening when they were camping in the enormous hallways and eating rations, Obi-Wan’s eyes haunted and following shapes that weren’t there.

“We’ll find it,” Rex had affirmed, bandaging Obi-Wan’s ankle with bacta-infused strips of the Jedi’s spare tunic.

“We’ll find that stupid crystal and then kill the Sith and find the biggest barrel of moonshine possible,” he tried to joke, every time panicked yells woke him up.

“I’m here,” he reassured when the other man couldn’t sleep anymore for fear of the dead Sith visiting his dreams.

“I’ll give it back, I’m only keeping it for you,” he swore, clipping the blue lightsaber on his belt, the third time Obi-Wan had almost beheaded him with it in a fit of panic.

“Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan, I’m here. I’m here,” he promised, wrapping himself around Obi-Wan’s back in the never-ending night, needing to be sure the other was still there, night after night, progressing day after day down the corridors, from one trap to another, his middle roped up to Obi-Wan’s, since that was now the only way to stop the General from wandering off when he was seeing things.

Sometimes Obi-Wan answered. Engaged in conversation. Pressed his hand.

Sometimes, more and more often, he was not really there.

“I’m bringing you back,” Rex swore, hour after hour, when Obi-Wan found sleep that looked too much like coma, his head on Rex’ knees, but his hand never went to the red hair that attracted him like a moth searching for a light. He wished, he wished so much, when the red head was lying on his lap; he would have given his cherished blasters for a chance to touch it, once, but Obi-Wan was in such a weakened state that would have been abusing his trust. And Rex, born to die in a slave army, understood better that so many natural born the concept of consent.

“Sometimes I feel we’ll die here, or wander for all eternity and I’ll spend that eternity just right there with you, and never have the possibility to ask you for permission,” he would whisper, before trying to find sleep himself.

And the next day he would begin again. Kill strange beasts with too many claws and teeth, guide Obi-Wan between traps, and talk, talk, sometimes for the sound of his own voice, sometimes for the way Obi-Wan had a few minutes without the glazed gaze.

“I’m here, General, you’re not alone.”

“Your former Padawan will yell at me later, for not taking good care of you. You’re growing too thin.”

“I’m pretty sure we have already seen that mural. Or is depiction of immolation so popular in this corner of the world?”

“Stars, we’re disgusting. If every underground pound we encounter wasn’t full of this things with tentacles, I would give it a try. Even with the black water.”

“It’s definitely not me who told you, but your Commander has a crush the size of a small moon for General Fisto. Pretty sure I’m not supposed to tell you, but kriff him for not giving me half his men to go with us.”

 “ _With cheering chorus and caaaaatchy tune_ …. Kriff, what were the lyrics after that?”

“I’m half in love with you, you know?”

 “How does that even work? Human/Nautelaan sex? Because I tried to check on the holonet, and I only found porn. That wasn’t as informative as you could believe.”

“Stars, I hope we’ll see the sun again. Any sun. Even the stupid purple one of that planet where there was that siege…”

 “So, we don’t have rations anymore. Tonight’s dinner: the scaly thing that tried to kill us two hours ago. I’m preparing you its spleen, it’s supposed to be full of good kriffing minerals and vitamins. I think. I also think it’s its spleen. Krifffffff. I’m asking Kix for a crash course in dietary need first thing out of here. And foraging. We should teach foraging to the shinies.”

“I think I’m losing time, my chrono was broken in the last fall. But it’s been more than ten days. Cody must be beside himself with worry.”

“No. Not half. I’m in love with you. What a joke I make.”

“ _With_ _caaaaatchy tune and a big trumpeeeet….._ No, that wasn’t it either.”

“I’m just saying, if we had the negotiations in open war grounds, perhaps the Senators would speak less and work more, you know?”

“What I would give for a cup of moonshine. Or even a cup of ale!”

“Do you think I’m going crazy? I’ve never been alone with myself. I’m not sure I’m handling it well. It would kriffin’ help if you were answering, just once… Of course not.”

“I’m here. I’m here, how I wish you could understand you’re not alone… I swear they will have you only in trampling over my corpse. And perhaps I will still try to protect you then.”

 

 

And one day… One day, they found the room at the centre of the maze. Gigantic, so big in fact that Rex would have sworn it was big enough to take all the space in the Temple. There wasn’t a ceiling, letting him see the night’s sky for the first time in what was an eternity. There probably had been a ceiling, once, but the enormous tree in the middle of the room had broken it long ago, its branches reaching almost four times higher than the walls. His heart beating wildly in his chest, Rex guided Obi-Wan to the base of the tree.

“And now what…. Obi-Wan? Obi-Wan, we have a way to go outside. Should we take it? We still don’t have the crystal.” Nothing. As days passed, the periods were Obi-Wan were there had become fewer and fewer.

Rex sighed. “If I could put my hands on the idiot who thought it was a good idea to send a user of the Light side here…”

Under the canopy he build their camp for the night, cajoled Obi-Wan until he succeed in making him eat a portion of the strange meat and drink a little, and then he searched for sleep, his mind already half full of ways to climb the tree. He had stopped guarding the camp nights ago: Obi-Wan couldn’t and he needed sleep, too. He hoped the next beast trying to eat them would have the decency to make enough noise to wake him up in time!

And in his dreams, the tree started to speak. Of course, it didn’t look like a tree, more like a… tree person. If the Kaminoans had taken other things as seriously as weapon trainings, he would have recognized the species as Neti, but as he didn’t even know what a Neti was, nor that the regretted Master Ood Bnar had been one, his first reaction was “What the kriff was in that meat? Did I poison the two of us?”

“The Sith Temple is trying to keep your friend prisoner until he perishes of thirst or hunger, his mind too busy fending off visions to think of sustenance,” the tree person was saying, “as it did for me, all those years ago. You need to escape with him, as quickly as possible, or it will succeed in killing you and then feast on his lost soul when he finally succumbs. I will help you escape and give you what you need. I have guarded it for this day for centuries, but you need to act quickly.”

And then Rex woke up to the sound of growling beasts.

“What the kriff…”

They were too many, even for him.

“Where are Harcase and his kriffin rotary canon when you need them? Obi-Wan. Go, climb. Go. I’m right behind, I swear. _Climb_!”

Pushing, swearing, shooting with one hand and climbing with the other, he progressed up the tree, Obi-Wan just in front of him. He threw a flare bomb to give them light but it only served to discover that the beasts were climbing too.

“ _Higher_! Come on, come on, _come on_ …”

Something very strange happened then. Just when he thought they would be thrown from the tree and eaten alive by a Sith-created abomination, something _very_ strange happened. A shining light, higher up in the tree, the light so powerful it seemed ready to ignite the world, seemed ready to burn Rex and Obi-Wan to a crisp, but it just passed by them, not warmer than a good shower, and progressed, descended… A first beast caught fire, then another, another.

“Climb!” Rex barked, even if he understood nothing of what was happening and, miracle of all the miracles, Obi-Wan obeyed. They climbed, climbed, until they found the source of the light. A stone, a red crystal, big as two fists, the colour of blood, stuck in the crotch between two tree branches and pulsing with light. After a second of hesitation, because what if it was burning, Rex took it. It was warm but not uncomfortably so. He put it in his pack and followed Obi-Wan higher. Beyond them, some of the branches were burning.

When they finally were high enough to jump onto the roof of the Temple, Rex, by habit, took the hand of the Jedi to drag him behind him, but this time the hand wasn’t limp, reacted, the fingers in his grasp entangling themselves with his, and they ran across the roof as if a thousand Grievouses were behind them.

Later, as Rex was coming out of the fresher on their shuttle, safely on the way to Coruscant, with a stupid grin on his face because feeling clean was the best feeling in the world after days in his armour, he found Obi-Wan kneeling between their bunks, but the Jedi wasn’t meditating. The grey gaze was as piercing as ever, so different than it had been in the maze.

“I must apologize for the burden I have been these last twenty days, Captain.”

“General, I…”

“No, it’s my turn to speak. I must confess I… I couldn’t answer, but every now and then I still heard you. I wasn’t trying to spy, but I learned things that you probably wouldn’t have confessed to me. And I discovered you, in a way I never could have in other circumstances, perhaps. I wasn’t in love with you when we entered that damned Temple. But listening to you, learning about you… I’m halfway in love with you and if you wanted, I would be happy to travel the rest of the way, in your company.”

His voice stuck in his throat after so many days speaking alone, Rex extended his hand and Obi-Wan took it, rising, his expression so serious. They leaned in together, slowly, so slowly, the fresh perfume of the toothpaste they had just used between them and then Rex, closing his eyes, pressed his lips, slowly, so slowly, to Obi-Wan’s.

**Ten months later.**

 

They had needed all that time to come back. Once Palpatine had been identified and then killed by Mace Windu in the most ferocious duel the galaxy had ever seen, the war had died out little by little, but there had been so much work, negotiations, treaties; all occasions for the Jedi to fulfil their first destiny of peacekeepers.

But now, they had come. Not alone, of course; the Sith Temple would be too dangerous to them. The clones, their friends, had come first and started dismantling the thing, wall after wall. It was enormous, it was gigantic, it was made in the strongest stone anyone had ever seen, but there were thousands of men here, hundreds of demolition experts, and day after day they progressed, one charge after another, one explosion after another, until finally they found the tree at the centre of the maze. It had suffered greatly from the fire but it was still standing.

Then, and only then, the Jedi came down to the moon. All the surviving Councillors, a limping Mace Windu helped by his former Padawan Depa, all the Masters and the older Knights, and together they kneeled in front of the tree, the clones watching silently. It was an enormous tree but there were so many of them that they were organized in ten circles around it.

Master T’ra Saa led the meditation in a session as close to a perfect Force Melding as there had been in centuries, an example so shining that it totally outgrew what Master C’baoth had been capable of before the Outbound Flight and his death. The clones watched, and watched, and watched, silent and patient, until after thirty hours there was a great noise, and the tree shrunk down, so fast it was almost impossible to follow the movement, but Master Saa could, and she caught the silhouette just in time, helping the healthy arm around her shoulders while her attention was already on the other, gravely burnt.

“You’re free. We’re taking you home, Master Ood Bnar.”

 

 


End file.
